Wheels on Meals

A Hong Kong action comedy set in Barcelona. Thomas and David run a mobile food van. They are two Chinese men living in Spain; they work a few districts a day and business is not bad. Their cousin Moby is a private detective. He is incompetent and constantly following the wrong person. There is a woman. Sylvia is a pickpocket and keeps turning up around the van. Then a question of inheritance appears. Without knowing it Sylvia is the heir to a great fortune and someone wants her out of the way. From there the film is a rescue. An asylum, a chase in the streets, a castle and a fight. What the narrative is interested in is not plot but rhythm: the story is very thin and the film does not hide it; everything is preparation for the last section. The finale takes place in the castle with three men fighting three separate opponents. The fighter opposite Jackie Chan is an American kickboxing champion. That section is counted among the most discussed sequences in fight cinema; the choreography is fast, the contact is real, and the scene is held long. The three leads come from the same school and have worked together since childhood; this is one of the films they made as a group. There is a reason the title is written back to front. The studio held a belief that films beginning with the letter M did not do business, and the title was changed for that. It was shot entirely in Spain. Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and Lola Forner are in the cast. Sammo Hung directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes classical Hong Kong fight comedy. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a story; the plot is loose and the humour has aged.